The 2017 Olof Palme Prize is awarded to Hédi Fried and Emerich Roth for their indefatigable contributions as defenders of the equal value of every human being, and for their life-long and exceptional educational work against Nazism, racism, violence and prejudice.
Marked by their heinous experiences of the Holocaust, they – like many Jews and other survivors of the Nazi death camps – lived a life of tension between their devastating trauma and their strong will to live on and tell the world of their experiences, in order to spare new generations from the collapse of humanity and democracy.